


turkish delight

by drow



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, M/M, Misunderstandings, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 00:57:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20219149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drow/pseuds/drow
Summary: “What’s a tea, exactly?” Jaal asks, in that endearing way of his. Ryder realizes that he’s starting to grin a second too late. “What’s açay?”





	turkish delight

Ryder can’t sleep.

It’s usually nothing serious, and talking with Lexi, and more often than not SAM, helps clear his mind most times but—he’s thinking about Dad, now. The numbness wouldn’t go away that quick, he thinks.

He sighs. He’s in the kitchen, the small space grounding him somehow. Everyone’s asleep, everything is far too quiet except for some engine that is whirling and it’s quiet, too. Like it’s aware of _space _and how this. . . eternity, this emptiness is just that. Eternal. Empty.

Ryder gets philosophical when he’s tired. Dad used to be the same, too. In the morning, when he would explain the _wonders _of the universe and how everything out there isn’t enough for him, and that no one else is able to see it. Ryder had been a man of action, then, and used to scoff at him, telling him that they’d be late if they didn’t finish up soon.

God. He misses him so bad. The ache in his chest gets impossibly bigger, then, to the point of it being unbearable. And then. . . it dulls.

Eternal. _Empty_.

“Ryder,” a voice startles him out of his thoughts but he’s still staring at the wall, looking at the stain Drack left. He’d lost a bet and banged his fist on the table so hard that it broke. Ryder remembers laughing, and laughing, and laughing. He remembers Lexi telling him to stop or she’d have to take matters into her own hands. It all feels like years ago when only three days has passed.

“Ryder,” the voice is more insistent, then, and a warm, large hand covers the entirety of his shoulder. He tenses. _Jaal_.

He clears his throat, “Jaal.”

“Are you alright?”

_No_, his voice echoes in his head, shouting and trying to claw its way out to the surface. _It should’ve been me. _“Of course,” he replies easily.

“Ryder—” Jaal starts, no doubt to tell him that he doesn’t believe him, or that he’s always there, or some other bullshit. Ryder doesn’t have the patience for it.

He leaves.

He doesn’t look at Jaal, not even once.

...

“God,” Ryder groans. “I miss _çay_.”

“_Çay_?”

“It means tea,” Ryder says, looking down at his cup of. . . whatever it is, with a miserable expression. “But, like, Turkish tea. Or, hell. Just normal tea would do at this point. Green tea, or whatever they used to serve in those dainty little cafes.”

“Oh,” Vetra says, her attention back at her cereal.

“I think it was green tea,” Ryder continues. No one’s listening to him now, except for Lexi.

Jaal comes in, then. Ryder feels his face warming slightly, which is, stupid. Nothing happened.

Lexi notices. Ryder sees that on the arch of her brow, in that look in her eyes. She doesn’t do more than that, though, which he’s grateful for.

She, instead, asks, “What’s the difference between regular tea and this _çay_?”

“What’s a tea, exactly?” Jaal asks, in that endearing way of his. Ryder realizes that he’s starting to grin a second too late. “What’s a _çay_?”

“_Çay _is tea, but better,” Ryder tells him.

"It is black tea." SAM says. Ryder rolls his eyes.

"_Better_. It’s stronger than green tea, or, uh, what’s that flower tea—”

“Chamomile tea.” SAM quips in.

“Right!”

“Fascinating,” Jaal says, looking straight at his eyes. Ryder tries not to read too much into it but he smiles that weird, crooked, embarrassing smile of his anyway. Lexi makes a ‘mh’ sound. Ryder ignores her.

“I don’t like tea,” Peebee says.

“I like it,” Cora says.

Peebee rolls her eyes, “Whatever.”

Ryder’s still looking at Jaal, who’s looking at him back. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Liam’s gaze going back and forth between them. Ryder doesn’t even know what’s happening.

Liam opens his mouth, then closes it when Ryder looks at him, sharp.

Suvi joins them, then, followed by Kallo and Gil and the crowdedness of the small room is enough of a reminder to tear open that wound in his chest that he stands up from his chair, ready to leave.

Lexi and Jaal stand up with him, their eyes on him and everybody in the room stills.

Jaal looks startled, and Lexi is. . . he doesn’t even know because he’s staring at Jaal, and so is Lexi, when he realizes that it’s weird when his attention is on Jaal and Jaal only.

“Uh,” he starts intelligently. “Did you two want something?”

“I wanted to speak,” Jaal says, but sits back down. Ryder blinks. “But it can wait.”

“Uh—”

“You and I can speak in the meantime, Ryder,” Lexi says. Jaal’s eyes are no longer on him. It surprises him how much he wants them back, surprises him how he craves his attention as much as he craves the tea from his homeland. “We need to discuss your daily intake of carbs.”

“Yes, that would be advisable,” SAM says. Liam snorts, tries to cover it up with a cough.

“_Hey_—” Ryder starts but Lexi grabs his arm, tightens her grip a little and that shuts him up.

They leave, Lexi and him. Lexi walks in front, fast and heavy as she always does. Ryder follows her mindlessly, feeling light all of a sudden. Probably because of looking at Jaal, and Jaal looking at him, which doesn't happen very often even though Ryder wants that all the time. Even though Jaal doesn't like him very much, and even though he doesn't seem to know how to act around Ryder most of the time.

“Did something happen yesterday night?”

“No,” Ryder drawls, mostly to hide how he blushes at the innuendo and arches an eyebrow. “And, with all due respect—”

“It _is _my business,” she cuts off, not unkindly. Her voice softens as her eyes harden. “Your well-being is my responsibility, Ryder. But yes, the reasons why I wanted to know were purely unprofessional, and for that I apologize.”

Ryder rolls his eyes, then, and opens his mouth to tell her not to see them as beings to be looked after objectively, not _after_. After. But she beats him to it.

“I know you’re hurting, Ryder,” Lexi says. Her voice gets impossibly soft. Ryder’s eyes start to sting, and he inhales sharply, turning his head to the side. She reminds him of her mother at times like this. “I want to help.”

_You can’t help_, he wants to say. _How can you_? But, instead, he drops his head on her shoulder, ignoring the way she flinches and immediately relaxes after, focusing on the hand that squeezes his shoulder tightly, reminding him of safety, of even ground.

“Oh.”

He lifts his head at the familiar voice behind him, and sees Jaal out of the kitchen, with one hand holding the door open. “I am sorry. Vetra was wondering if the two of you wanted the remaining, ah, _cereal_. She says it’s the last one.”

“Oh,” Ryder says, and sniffs, Jaal’s eyes get a little bit wider. “No. No, thank you. Lexi?”

She sighs, “Of course not.”

She goes back in. Jaal retracts his hand from the door and takes a few steps towards him. Ryder aches.

“Are you alright?” Jaal asks. It all feels like the night before, but this time Ryder is better, and Jaal truly helps but. But.

“Of course,” he replies, just as easy as the night before. Jaal’s smile falters and Ryder panics, doesn’t know what he’s doing until he’s already reaching out, touching the edge of Jaal’s _Rofjinn _with hesitant fingers.

He retracts them just as quickly, breaking their eye contact that always tends to leave him breathless, embarrassment creating a deep pit of fire in his stomach and warming his whole body. He mumbles something about being fine again before he leaves.

He feels numb all day long.

...

“_Çay _is just black tea, then?”

“No,” Ryder sighs. “It’s. . . well, _yeah _but _çay _is more about the experience, I think. We would drink it all the damn time. And a morning without it wouldn’t really be a morning. As soon as we woke up, we would make _çay _and just. . . start the day.”

“Huh,” Gil says, his hands already back on the engine, brows furrowed in concentration. “Sounds poetic. You’re kind of stealing my thing here, Ryder.”

“_Your thing_?” Ryder laughs, remembering the poem Gil had sent him a week or so ago. “Your. . . your thi—”

“Yeah, yeah. Shut up.”

“Heleus,” Ryder starts, then ducks to avoid the wrench thrown at his head. Gil shoves at his shoulder until he’s being forcibly thrown out of the room. He’s still laughing.

“Ryder, I _will _crash this damn ship!”

“Are you. . . are you healing us?” He continues, giggling. Only after Gil manages to close the door in his face does he manage to calm down. Right next to the engine, overlooking the Nomad, Jaal is standing, and when Ryder notices him he can’t help it, he stiffens.

“Pathfinder,” Jaal says.

“Jaal,” he says. He doesn’t understand why it’s so hard for him, for _them_, to fucking communicate. Jaal doesn’t smile at him as he does at Peebee, or Liam; Ryder can’t joke around with him like he can with Gil, Suvi, _hell. _Even with Lexi.

Ryder nods, once, and leaves quickly. Mostly because he’s already thinking about reaching out again, to touch the damn poncho-rofjinn-whatever-the-hell because it’s the only part of Jaal he can think about touching without hyperventilating.

...

Peebee wants to come along.

“It’s just Eos,” Ryder tries, desperate. “It’ll be boring as hell. Just to see how it’s doing after the—”

“_Personal project_, Ryder, I need all the Remnant tech I can get,” Peebee cuts him off. He doesn’t find it cute when she does it, even though he knows he’s being childish. “Plus. . . the company is _so_ worth the trouble.” She winks at Jaal, who chuckles, deep, in return.

Ryder knows he’s glaring. He can’t stop it. So he just says _fine_. Fine.

...

Ryder makes a sharp turn, cursing at the rocks that keep appearing out of nowhere. Peebee’s laughing and Jaal’s doing that rumbly, deep, sexy fucking chuckle. He glances up at the rearview mirror, which proves to be a mistake, because Peebee’s in Jaal’s lap, and they’re both laughing and Jaal genuinely looks like he’s having fun and, and.

Ryder never understands pointless flirting. He doesn't get it. He doesn't—

"Seatbelts _on_, Peebee," he says, instead. 

He tries not to think of thinning lips and tense shoulders. He tries not to think about the stilted ‘_Pathfinder_’, when it's usually warmth with everybody else. His chest tightens and even after minutes that felt like decades, even after the Nomad is blissfully quiet, the ache never leaves.

...

After the mission’s done, after they gathered whatever they could about the Remnant, _after_. Ryder drinks.

First, he thinks about his father and how he’s a complete fuck-up. SAM tries to butt in, as one does when they’re constantly rummaging through your thoughts but he tells him, not so kindly, to get the hell out of his mind, just for once.

Stupidly enough, and not surprisingly at all, his thoughts stray to Jaal.

_God_, he’d been so fucking excited to meet new species. The most excited even. He’d practically leaped out of Tempest the second they’d landed, scared the shit out of the poor Angara when he literally _beamed _at them, and now what. Jaal doesn’t even like him. He probably finds him annoying, or something. He probably finds him hard to talk to. And he’s _right_.

He’d always been like this, though. Even back in school, in his training days, in fucking _parties_. Too tense, too unlikable, too ugly. He'd never been the charming kid that everyone liked. 

He hates himself. He misses his father. He hates _himself_.

He drinks until his thoughts don’t really belong to him anymore.

He opens up his e-mail terminal.

SAM returns back in an instant, “Pathfinder, I would not advise—”

“Shut up," he mumbles, head pounding. "Shut up, shut up, _shut up_."

_Dear Jaal_, he starts. _I hate you. I hate you for mkiagn me feel like thhis. _

He hits send, then passes out.

**Author's Note:**

> 💖


End file.
